Fantastic Fest to Honor The Warriors Director Walter Hill

Fantastic Fest, the annual Austin-based celebration of weird and wonderful cinema, has just announced that legendary action writer/director Walter Hill will be in attendance to receive a Lifetime Achievement award at this year’s festival (Sept. 17-24). 

The honor places Hill in a rarified group, alongside previous recipients that include directors Park Chan-wook (Decision to Leave), Bong Joon-ho (Parasite), Takashi Miike (Ichi the Killer), producers Roger and Julie Corman, fight choreographer extraordinaire Yuen Woo-Ping (The Matrix), composer Clint Mansell (Moon, The Fountain), and actors Malcolm McDowell (She Will, Caligula) and Jess Franco (Django). This will be followed by a nationwide retrospective of his incredible body of work at Alamo Drafthouses, starting January 2027.

Hill, who previously was honored with Austin Film Festival’s Extraordinary Contribution to Cinema Award in 2017, has been a revolutionary force in cinema since he began as a scriptwriter on crime flicks like Hickey & Boggs and The Drowning Pool, but most memorably putting pen to paper to rewrite The Getaway.

He moved into directing with one of Charles Bronson’s most standout roles, as a bare-knuckle boxer in Hard Times, before redefining the action genre through a series of grimy, incisive, muscular yet cerebral films, from the minimalism of The Driver to the mythologically tinged street drama of The Warriors, the neon-drenched rock & roll fantasy of Streets of Fire, understated Western-meets-gangster-film deconstruction Last Man Standing, and meditative historical dramas like Geronimo: An American Legend and Wild Bill. He even showed a flair for laughter with the unexpected success of Nick Nolte-Eddie Murphy buddy comedy 48 Hrs.

If there’s been one tragedy about Hill’s career, it’s that the genius of his work is often not recognized on release but instead in the years after. That’s undeniably true of 1987’s Extreme Prejudice, his merciless depiction of childhood friends turned bitter enemies on opposite sides of the law, played as adults by the never-better duo of Nolte and Powers Boothe. Fantastic Fest will screen what is now acknowledged as a Neo-Western classic, to be followed by a special conversation with Hill.

Festival director Lisa Dreyer called Hill “inarguably one of the greatest genre directors of all time. … He has gifted us with so many unforgettable films over the decades, and I cannot think of a more deserving filmmaker for this award.”

The tribute to Hill will continue with that retrospective season, which will include The Getaway, Streets of Fire, Red Heat, 48 Hrs., Southern Comfort, The Long Riders, and, of course, The Warriors. Calling Hill “one of the American cinema’s greatest pulp artists,” Jake Isgar, Alamo Drafthouse Director of Alternative Content & Specialty Programming and Fantastic Fest programmer, said that “showcasing his work to audiences coast-to-coast has long been a dream of ours, and one we can’t wait to fulfill.”

Fantastic Fest 2017 runs Sept. 17-24. Tickets and info at fantasticfest.com.

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